CountryI enjoy almost everything that comes out of the Country genre, mainly because it is so close to home. The songs contain stories that the average person feels and can relate to, and others contain stories and images happy-go-lucky lifestyles and general good times. I have a radio in my computer room, and its default preset is a country station. This music has a life to it, found in no other style of vocal music in my experience. Country artists are known to touch the soul of the listener, and I commend this genre for having a special place in the music world.
I don't have a list of specific country artists whom I like, nor can I recall the names of many good country songs. I just tend to enjoy the genre itself, for what it is; a down-to-earth look at the world, through vocal music. Here are a couple of examples that come to mind, to show the variety of Country:
Road Hammer; a song about Working in general, and road construction, specifically. I enjoy it because it's nice to listen to and the lyrics are so easy to relate to. The artist has captured the world of work very nicely in this song.
Don't Take The Girl by Tim McGraw. A classic song about a boy who meets a girl as a young child. It's just a beautifully-written song, very pleasant to listen to, and very touching.
Moving on from typical vocal music, into the instrumental world. Here, I'm starting with
Video Game soundtracks.
Platform / Adventure gamesI have always deeply enjoyed the effects that a good game soundtrack can have on the emotions of a player, and the impact it can have on the game. Some prime examples of well-suited game soundtracks are the Donkey Kong Country series for Super Nintendo (aka. SNES), especially DKC 1 and DKC 2. The music tends to suit the atmosphere of each location perfectly, capturing the essense of each environment so cleanly. It compliments the game so nicely, I have always found that these two games had memorable soundtracks. A very good example is the Haunted Forest music fron DKC 2. The music has a clean, ambient sound, while remaining moving and melodic. Wonderful work here.
As a slightly more modern example, Banjo-Kazooie (Nintendo 64) shows wonderful work in musical transitions. The musica themes throughout an area are kept the same, but the style in which they are played change as the play moves throughout the area. For example, if a player walks into a beach, the music changes to a tropical, steel-drum style. If the player goes under water, this Same Music changes style in real-time to a smooth, melodic harp style, suitable for water. This game is full of such transitions, and even many of the original music themes are fantastic.
RPGsI have never been a big RPG fan, so my experience in the RPG world of games is rather limited. My soundtrack of choice for RPG games goes to the SNES game, Earthbound. The music was able to continue the comedic aspects of the game, while retaining the emotions for the serious aspects of the game. The story of earthbound was strong and serious, and the plot-building pieces of music showed this very nicely, in a very unique style of sound.
On another side of the picture, the battle themes in the game were extremely diverse, keeping the gamer at-ease throughout the course of the game. Many RPGs are plagued with a small variety of battle musical themes. Over time, the player may encounter a series of battles and become annoyed by hearing the same battle music OVER and OVER and OVER again as the hours go by. This is why I chose Earthbound over Super Mario RPG. Mario RPG was a very nice game, musically, however the single Battle theme got exceedingly annoying after playing the game for a bit. Good thing it was catchy
. Earthbound boasts approximately 10 battle themes for the game, keeping the player refreshed during runs of repeated battles. This was a very good idea on the developers' part.
Racing gamesSome of the most unique racing music I've heard came from a little game series, not well-known, and not particularily well-liked. The games? Snowboard Kids 1 and 2 (Nintendo 64). Ever since I played the original SBK, I oddly fell in love with the music. It was just so randomly catchy, and some of the melodies were rather interesting. The style was simple, yet unique. I actually liked the music in these games so much that I recorded Both games' soundtracks to my computer, right off the game (using a reasonably sophisticated process, in order to get full quality. None of this microphone-in-front-of-speaker stuff
). I also worked on a number of MIDIs for the game, though they were written years ago, and the quality isn't as high as you will see on my MIDIs I have posted here.
Some examples of music from the Snowboard Kids series can be found
Here at the Video Game Music Archive, as midis. The midis sequenced by "Action" and "Action9000" are my work. My best midi that I have posted for these games is "Sunset Rock". My favorite midi, and favorite track from the game, however, is Silver Mt. I must admit though, the MIDI by Dave Phaneuf is more accurate than mine. The others aren't too bad, but I could do them much better now, if I gave it the time. I also started working on a Snowboard Kids Megamix (as a MIDI file) a couple of years ago. It seems to have died, as a project, but I still have it, and I actually really like its progress!
It has interesting progression so far (though only just over a minute is complete). If anyone is interested, I could post up what I have completed so far
I'll continue this "essay" in the next post.
